‘My 2nd Son Is Gone Too; I Don’t Know What to Feel’

ORANGE — Moon Il Lim apologized for feeling empty. But for the second time in less than a year, he has lost a son in a car accident. There is no anger at fate’s cruelty. Not even rage at the driver who police said was drunk and caused the fatal crash.

“To be frank, I don’t have any feelings now,” Lim, a resident of Cerritos, said Thursday. He paused before adding, “That is what’s helping me hang on.”

Lim’s 16-year-old son, Sam Y. Lim, died in a car crash on New Year’s Day in La Palma as he and his mother headed home from a midnight church service at Holy Faith Korean Presbyterian in Cypress.

His mother, Soo Kyung Lim, remained in critical condition Thursday following surgery at UCI Medical Center in Orange. Doctors told the family she was bleeding internally and might require a liver transplant if her condition doesn’t vastly improve.

Police said Patrick Ruzzamenti, the driver of the truck that broadsided the Lims’ car, was intoxicated and his blood-alcohol content was more than three times the 0.08% legal limit. Ruzzamenti, 49, of Buena Park, was placed in police custody before being transferred to Long Beach Memorial Hospital, where he was listed in serious condition Thursday.

A state Department of Motor Vehicles spokeswoman said Ruzzamenti’s driver’s license expired in January 1996.

Sam Lim’s death came 10 months after his 18-year-old brother, Thomas, died in a single-car accident on the Riverside Freeway.

“A parent never gets over the death of a child,” Lim, 46, said Thursday as he, his visiting parents and more than a dozen friends and relatives gathered outside the hospital to await news of the results of his wife’s surgery.

“But now, my second son is gone too,” Lim added as he took out his wallet and flipped to two photographs of his smiling sons, taken when they were in elementary school. “This is terrible. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to feel.”

Moon Il and Soo Kyung Lim have no other children.

While Lim was calm, his parents, who were visiting from South Korea for the holidays, did not hide their pain. “What did [Lim and his wife] do in their lives to be punished like this?” Yul Hee Lim asked as she cried. “Why is this happening to my son twice?”

Ironically, Yul Hee Lim and her husband, Yun Kyoo, came to Los Angeles because they wanted to be with their son as they remember their oldest grandson, Thomas, this holiday season.

Moon Il Lim was working in South Korea when Thomas died, and he said he still has regrets that his last memories with his oldest son were somewhat hazy. But he recalled with clarity his last conversation with Sam. Tuesday night, he called his son from work to apologize for not being able to make it to church with the family.

“I told him I’m sorry I couldn’t go to church with him and I said, ‘Pray for me,’ and he said, ‘I will,’ ” recounted Lim, who is a director of production for FM-Seoul in Los Angeles.

It was Lim’s turn to pray Thursday.

He asked God to help speed up his wife’s recovery. He asked God to watch after his two sons. “At least, [Sam’s] old brother is not lonely now,” he said.

He even asked God to help him forgive the man who allegedly caused the accident that killed his son. “I want to forgive him. It’s very hard, but I’ll try,” Lim said, his hand shaking as he lit a cigarette. “I have to remember that he did not intend to kill.”

Lim, his friends and relatives all said Sam, like his older brother, was an outgoing, friendly and courteous teen. The Cerritos Gahr High School sophomore was a straight-A student and a drummer in the school’s marching band.

He also played drums with an informal band in the youth group at Holy Faith, where his mother is choir conductor.

Jaewon Chang, pastor of the church, said that after the service on New Year’s Day, he shook the youth’s hand as he was leaving. “I told him, ‘Continue to play the drums joyfully,’ ” said Chang, who came to hospital Thursday to pray with the family.

He was mindful that this was the second time he had to console the Lims over a son’s death.

“But this time, I didn’t know what to say,” the pastor said. “How do you talk about a tragedy that happens twice?”

Also contributing to this report was Times correspondent John Canalis.

* FEWER DRUNK MOTORISTS: Police reported a drop in drunk-driving arrests during the holiday season in O.C. B1